Yelnats T.J.

Karma: 892

Current:

Working on high-impact stuff affecting US democracy and the US political system. Contact me if you are looking to have impact in these fields.

Past:

Co-founder of Concentric Policies

CE Incubatee 2023

NGO and entrepreneurial experience in the conflict zone of Congo

Talk to me about American governance/political systems/democracy

My journey to EA:

2009: start arriving at utilitarian-adjacent ethics
Dec 2012: read Peter Singer’s Famine Affluence and Morality
Circa 2013/14: find my way to EA through googling about Singer and FAaM
2014-2019: in the orbit of EA. i.e. will talk to people about morality and utilitarian stuff but not very engaged in the community aside from attending uni club meeting every once and while.
2020: EAGxVirtual (I’m starting to move from the orbit closer to the actual community)
2022: Dive deep into the community. And now we arrive at the present day.

Yelnats T.J. 9 Oct 2025 4:14 UTC
5 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Benton’s comment on: Benton ’s Quick takes
As someone working in the US democracy space professionally, I think it is tractable and there are strategies we could employ here that have worked in other contexts (nonviolent civil resistance as described by scholar Erica Chenoweth being an obvious example).

Yelnats T.J. 15 Aug 2025 22:46 UTC
1 point
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Austin’s comment on: Invest in ACX Grants projects!
Checking back in.

Yelnats T.J. 3 May 2025 0:15 UTC
1 point
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on: Poll: Advance Notice of Critical Posts
A business week

Yelnats T.J. 1 May 2025 0:22 UTC
18 points
3 ∶ 2
in reply to: Peter’s comment on: kuhanj’s Quick takes
“Basically no one took this seriously as a possibility, or at least I do not know of anyone.”

I alluded to this over a year ago in this comment, which might count in your book as taking it seriously. But to be honest, where we are at in Day 100 of this administration is not the territory I expected us to be in until at least the 2^nd year.

I think these people do exist (those that appreciated the second term for the risks it presented) and I’ll count myself as one of them. I think we are just less visible because we push this concern a lot less in the EA discourse than other topics because 1) the people with these viewpoints and are willing to be vocal about it are a small minority of EA*, 2) espousing these views is perceived as a way to lose social capital, and 3) EA institutions have made decisions that have somewhat gatekeeped how much of this discourse can take place in EA official venues.
Note on #1
A lot of potential EAs—people who embrace EA principles and come to the conclusion that the way to do the most good is work on democracy/political systems/politics of Great Powers—interact with the community, are offput by the little engagement and, sometimes, dismissiveness of the community towards this cause area, and then decide that rather than fight the uphill battle of moving the Overton window they will instead retreat back to other communities more aligned with their conclusions.
This characterized my own relationship with EA. Despite knowing and resonating with EA since 2013/2014, I did not engage deeply with the community until 2022 because there seemed to be little to no overlap with people that wanted to change the political system and address the politics upstream of the policies EA spend so much time thinking how to influence. I think this space is still small in EA but is garnering more interest and will only do so because I think we are at the beginning and not the end of this moment in history.
Note on #1 and #2
When I talk with EAs one-on-one, a substantial portion share my views that EA negelects politics of the world’s superpower and the political system upstream of those politics. However, very few act on these beliefs or take much time to vocalize them. I think people underestimate how much people share this sentiment, which only makes it less likely for people to speak out (which of course, leads back to people underestimating the prevalence of the belief).
Note on #3
CEA has once allowed me to speak once on the topic of risks to the US system at an EAGxVirtual—kudos where it is due. However, I’ve have inquired multiple times with CEA since 2022 about running such an event at an actual EAG and have always been declined; I think this is clear area of improvement. I’d also like to see networking meetups for people interested in this area at the EAGs themselves instead of people resorting to personally organizing satellite events around them; recently there was indication CEA was open to this.

On the Forum, posts in and around this topic can, and sometimes do, get marked as community posts and thus lose visibility. This is not to say it happens all the time. There are posts that make it to the main page that others would want to see moved to community.

Yelnats T.J. 7 Apr 2025 21:13 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: Austin’s comment on: Invest in ACX Grants projects!
Wanted to check in on this. I couldn’t find any new info online about ACXG 2025. Thanks!

Yelnats T.J. 2 Apr 2025 3:58 UTC
1 point
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: David_Althaus’s comment on: David_Althaus’s Shortform
Another way to think about the risk is not just the current existing authoritarian regimes (e.g. China, Russia, DPRK) but also the alliance or transnational movement of right-wing populism, which is bleeding into authoritarianism, seeking power in many Western democracies. Despite being “nationalist”, each country’s movement and leaders often support each other on the world stage and are learning from each other e.g. Bannon pays a support visit to France’s National Front, many American right-wingers see Orban as a model and invite him to CPAC, Le Pen and Orban discussed strategies to undermine EU policies and bolster nationalist agendas.
Perhaps the scenario to watch out for is several of these strongmen/strongwomen coming to power at the same time. Right now the rise of right-wing populism lead by authoritarian-aspiring strongman in small-L liberal democracies has been manageable because their capture of institutional power has been uneven across counties at any point in time, but I wouldn’t rely on that in the future because Establishment and Liberal parties generally have not shown the ability to transform the drivers of polarization and economic populism (some of which gets co-opted for right-wing populism and authoritarianism) i.e. these right-wing and authoritarian parties will continue to increase their vote share over time.

Yelnats T.J. 11 Mar 2025 23:36 UTC
5 points
0 ∶ 0
on: New Focus Area: Abundance and Growth
Nice timing with Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson’s Abundance coming out soon

Yelnats T.J. 17 Feb 2025 20:07 UTC
4 points
1 ∶ 0
in reply to: Ozzie Gooen’s comment on: Is American democracy at risk? Should we work on this?
And we should also examine neglect not just on the headline number of dollars going into the space but on specific facets, like how much money in that space actually goes to top tier impact opportunities or how much investment is there in innovating the space/interventions.

Yelnats T.J. 17 Feb 2025 20:05 UTC
14 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Is American democracy at risk? Should we work on this?
I have argued previously that A) liberal democracy and stability of the American system is under threat and B) the trajectory of American political dysfunction and polarization is unsustainable and we’ve passed theoretical red lines where a course correction would have happened if there was going to be one.
I don’t have an updated version of this piece for the 2025, but I’ll link to this briefing that thoroughly catalogs authoritarian probing and state cannibalization.
Here is the high-level case for tractability: The EA+EA-adjacent sphere has improved and arguably disrupted the (philanthropic) global health/development and animal welfare spaces yielding major impact. When looking at democracy/“resistance” space as a whole, I think there is a clear case that EA could fill a similar role by A) pushing the effectiveness mindset/consequentialist thinking, B) building and promoting GiveWell-like orgs in the space (see Power for Democracies and Focus for Democracy), C) incubating envelope-pushing interventions similar to Charity Entrepreneurship (Movement Labs might be the closest reference in the democracy space), D) bringing in more funding and funding that is also more comfortable in hits-based giving (Democracy Fund’s report reflects the ability to absorb more funding and innovation). I think an evolution in the democracy space similar to the ongoing evolution in GHD and AW would significantly improve the space’s position to avert authoritarian consolidation and other antidemocratic outcomes.
I will note that GHD and AW are not 1:1 correlations with democracy fragility as cause areas. Unlike GHD and AW, you are staring down a game-over scenario where democracy fails in an irreversible way which makes democracy fragility a more time-sensitive field.
Democracy work is also heavy on the complex systems interactions that are hard to quantify, making it unwise to rely only on a small set of cost-effectiveness recommendations like GiveWell does. In that regard, an org like Democracy Funders Network can be a complement to a GiveWell-style Focus for Democracy.
I am currently helping to develop the posture towards the democracy space of an EA-aligned philanthropic advisory group. When appropriate in the future, I will provide some comments/recommendations regarding the brainstorm you are working on. But I’ll leave readers with my framework and analogy that I use to conceptualize the problem (this is my original analogy, so I’d appreciate attribution if anyone reuses it):
Spectrum of causation:
- Upstream e.g. money in politics, first-past-the-post X partisan primaries X single-member districts
- Midstream e.g. capture of a major party by an aspiring authoritarian demagogue
- Downstream e.g. authoritarian candidates win elections, limited repercussions for insurrection
- Immediate threats of authoritarian consolidation e.g. WH administration creating a constitutional crisis by ignoring court orders and testing resolve of judicial branch
Analogy (still a work in progress)
Gas = upstream causes
Flammable material sitting around/fire breaks = midstream
Inaccessible portals/access points = downstream
Flames on load-bearing walls = Immediate threats of authoritarian consolidation
The house, America, is on fire! A gas leak ignited into a raging blaze. The leak went undetected for a long time, though more and more occupants were noticing the strange smell just before the fire erupted, with some even trying to address the apparent leak. Now, the fire threatens to consume the entire house.
The fire hasn’t spread to the entire house but it appears like it could quickly. At the moment it’s threatening some critical load-bearing walls and some portals necessary for firefighters to access certain rooms. Amidst all this, the gas is still leaking and continuing to fuel the fire.
Right now people are frantically trying to douse water on the fire; some are indiscriminately throwing water on the flames closest to them, others are using their water to regain strategic entry points, and the water of some is being used preserve the load-bearing walls to prevent the structure from collapsing, which would render all efforts null. It’s unclear if the load-bearing walls will collapse in, how quickly they could, and which ones are most liable to do so.
Some people are in the house trying to cut firebreaks—removing flammable materials and closing doors—to slow the spread before it reaches untouched rooms; yet there is a lack of clarity on how effective the efforts have been and what rooms to prioritize.
Nobody has turned off the gas in the basement yet, and the fire won’t be truly extinguished until the gas leak is stopped. Efforts to reach the basement in the burning house have had incremental success thus far, and some people are trying to problem solve how to make the treacherous journey to the basement in a house that is on fire. However, this has the least attention at the moment, just as the gas leak did before the fire began.
There is a clear need to triage and be strategic that must be balanced with urgency and the inability to have full confidence in the crisis such as this.
***
My prior is that EA could generally focus more on the bookends of that spectrum.
Tackling immediate threats is pressing because the aggressive onslaught of authoritarian probing appears to be creating a lot of hinge points where either checks and balances work or authoritarian consolidation happens (which this early on in the term is quite bad for free/fair elections and peaceful transfer of power in 2028/2029).
EA would play to its strengths by working to on the upstream causes which are relatively neglected. We got into this situation because society neglected the upstream causes, these causes will continue to be neglected whilst a crisis is perceived, innovation is needed to effectively tackle these upstream causes.

Yelnats T.J. 7 Feb 2025 18:21 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: Karen Singleton’s comment on: Against Addressing Root Causes
I was gonna write something similar, but I think this comment nailed it (kudos KarenS). So I’ll highlight two key arguments I endorse:
- Framing mitigating the worst immediate effects and addressing upstream drivers as mutually exclusive is unhelpfully reductionist and, as other have pointed out, distracts from good arguments to invest in reacting to immediate effects over root causes.
- Addressing upstream causes/systems change can have higher ROI than just addressing immediate effects in the long term and especially with issues that continue on in perpetuity without intervening on the root level. Case and point, Titotal’s example of slavery abolition. (Abolition of slavery has come up before as an interesting thought experiment to EA’s relation with root causes/systems change.

Yelnats T.J. 3 Feb 2025 21:59 UTC
18 points
10 ∶ 0
on: Implications of USAID freeze on donations
A little off-topic and self-promoting, but I thought this take aged well, and it’s a good reminder that EAs should not neglect the long game of democracy fragility in the US during these non-election years because even securing liberal democracy at the ballot box takes investments years in advance.

Yelnats T.J. 3 Feb 2025 21:51 UTC
1 point
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: David Mathers🔸’s comment on: Introducing the Effektiv Spenden “Defending Democracy” fund
I’ve seen the term militant democracy used to describe how democracies will have laws that curtail political expression and representation when it threatens the survival of liberal democracy. Another articulation is that the marketplace of ideas is not enough to keep anti-democratic players out of a critical mass of power (not necessarily a representative majority, just enough to erode democratic norms/guardrails), thus the society has made the tradeoff of empowering some subjective but hopefully impartial institutions of government to gatekeep the political arena from the most dangerous actors to democracy.

Yelnats T.J. 1 Feb 2025 21:39 UTC
10 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Cornelis Dirk Haupt’s comment on: If EAs existed 100 years ago, would they support Prohibition?
Reminds me of something similar Kelsey Piper wrote:
“Would an effective altruist movement in the 1840s U.S. have been abolitionist?”
“Next, imagine someone walked into that 1840s EA group and said, ’I think black people are exactly as valuable as white people and it should be illegal to discriminate against them at all,” or someone walked into the 1920s EA group and said, “I think gay rights are really important.” I want us to be a community that wouldn’t have kicked them out.”
I think EA would have been a place in the 19th century that would have tolerated if not agreed with abolitionist views. My fear is that EAs’ position to someone like Benjamin Lay would be his work as futile effort on an intractable problem and instead focus on improving welfare of slaves on plantations through some type of scheme. And this is my concern of EAs today, that the community leaves impact on the table by not pursuing systems change (e.g. political system reform) because it seems to have low tractability.

Yelnats T.J. 1 Feb 2025 20:49 UTC
25 points
4 ∶ 0
on: If EAs existed 100 years ago, would they support Prohibition?
Instead of a binary, you can also ask what policies would they have supported. Perhaps they would have supported a policy that preserved individual choice while creating substantial friction between users and drinking as well as limited the profit incentive get people to drink more.
It’s worth noting that the most lethal drugs are the legal ones (measured by total fatalities). Take tobacco for example. It’s been around for millennia, however we did not get the modern tobacco epidemic—which killed 100 million in the 21st century—until A) mass manufacturing of cigarettes, B) heavy engineering of cigarettes to be hyper palatable and addictive, and C) modern mass marketing. This is why I’m partial to the tobacco endgame proposals that focus on removing the profit incentive to get people to consume addictive and/or harmful substances. Consumption in society can be managed to a point of acceptable trade-offs by friction and nudges once you remove the asymmetry of multinational conglomerates spending billions of dollars to get adults (and yes, youth too—the majority of smokers start when they are minors) to consume tobacco and alcohol whilst effectively lobbying for much weaker regulations than recommended by the public health community.

Yelnats T.J. 20 Dec 2024 0:33 UTC
1 point
0 ∶ 0
on: Transitioning from school to work is hard! Some advice on managing the self
Thanks for your openness. Not an easy thing to do but gives a lot value to the reader.

Also great advice

Yelnats T.J. 7 Dec 2024 19:42 UTC
3 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Austin’s comment on: Invest in ACX Grants projects!
Thanks for the info. I had been anticipating it would be in December like last year. This is helpful to know.

Yelnats T.J. 6 Dec 2024 21:56 UTC
3 points
0 ∶ 0
on: Invest in ACX Grants projects!
When will ACX 2025 grant applications open?

Yelnats T.J. 21 Nov 2024 5:03 UTC
6 points
3 ∶ 1
in reply to: Marcus Abramovitch 🔸’s comment on: Averting autocracy in the United States of America
As we discussed at EAG B, the material change between the 1st term and 2nd term is that there were many “adults in the room” who kept the former president from fulfilling his worst instincts. Whereas now there has been a 4-year effort to cultivate a pipeline of loyalists to staff the government. Ezra’s episode on Trump and his disinhibition is a good piece on the topic.
The nominations for the national security apparatus are the strongest signal that he wants power consolidated and will test GOP Senators out the gate if they will be a check on his power.
I think Ezra’s start to the podcast that Michael linked was apt. If someone two months ago said that Gaetz, Gabbard, and Hegeseth were going to be nominated for DoJ, DNI, DoD, it would have been framed as hyperbolic doomer Liberal talk. However that is the universe we are in.
Have the nominations and the proposal to purge military generals updated your priors at all since EAG B?

Yelnats T.J. 21 Nov 2024 4:49 UTC
3 points
1 ∶ 0
on: Averting autocracy in the United States of America
A post/submission I wrote to OP two years ago has some thoughts on this:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/kmx3rKh2K4ANwMqpW/destabilization-of-the-united-states-the-top-x-factor-ea
It has some recommended readings and outlines potential interventions.
I’m still distilling what I would add to it in the present day.
The top thing on my mind is the proposed board to purge generals. (Note: presidents already have the authority to dismiss generals, however the implication of this proposal is that they want to purge so many generals that they need a systematic vehicle to do it.) As I wrote in my piece, our biggest bulwark against an authoritarian power grab is that the United States Military is very strong, professional, competent, and apolitical. Any changes away from that status quo should raise alarm bells.
The nominations to the military/national security apparatus are clearly about total loyalty over competence. These are the military and intelligence services that when captured in other countries by authoritarians have cemented regimes.
Interventions in the immediate term targeted at disrupting the consolidation of power (in the aforementioned moves) could be very high leverage.
For a longer-term intervention that focuses more on the upstream drivers of our political dysfunction which enables authoritarians, I still back the idea of doing local/state ballot initiatives to reform the political system. A gap I see in the space is that political system reform via initiatives is pursued piecemeal instead of comprehensively. Also, anti-establishment sentiments poll very high amongst Americans including the Left and Right, yet that bi-populist agreement is not being effectively tapped. Not only could mobilizing it help get initiatives over the line, but it would create depolarizing interactions between regular citizens.

Yelnats T.J. 7 Nov 2024 18:24 UTC
4 points
1 ∶ 1
in reply to: Yelnats T.J.’s comment on: Bad omens for US farmed animal policy work?
I think one of the most compelling cases is using voter initiatives for political system reform.
The short argument is that a large portion of EA has bought into policy as high EV because the high-leverage impact more than compensates for the hits-based nature of it. However, upstream of policy is politics. Generally, the problem is not a lack of solutions but a lack of political will. Yet, even upstream of politics is the political system which creates the selection effects for who gets into office and the incentives that act on them while in office.
Political system reform, while more challenging to quantify, theoretically has very very very high ROI because you are addressing the coefficient of a coefficient acting on policy.
However, legislators have proven resistant to changing the rules of how they got to power. Hence, prominent people/organizations in the money-in-politics and electoral reform space have opted to use ballot initiatives to circumvent the legislature.